Unbroken: The Life of Jada Philius

September 5, 1994. It was a humid day, drenched in sweat and tension, as if the sky already knew two daughters would be born into a world where love and pain would wrestle endlessly. On that day, I entered the world with fists clenched, lungs screaming, and a spirit unwilling to break—though life would try more than once. My name is Jada Philius. I was born second, a few minutes after my twin sister, Jalade. The room we came into was not a nursery filled with pastel dreams and lullabies. It was a hospital room, crowded with unfamiliar faces, nurses scurrying, a mother groaning, and a father pacing outside—not quite ready, not quite absent. I don’t remember that moment consciously, but the body remembers. The soul remembers. And from what I’ve been told, we came into this world already linked—our fingers wrapped around each other’s in the crib, our cries rising and falling in harmony, like music that only we understood. My mother, Clandestine Beauge, was a mystery even then. She was young, beautiful, strong-willed, and burdened. Life had not been kind to her, and by the time we arrived, her heart was already carved with scars she never talked about. Some days, I think she loved us the best way she could—through survival, not softness. My father, Jared Philius, was a shadow in and out of light. He was there when he was there. He smiled, he held us, he said the right things—but you could feel the absence hiding behind his eyes. He had other children from other women. Some names I didn’t even learn until I was much older—Mirlande, Jonah, Javan, Wislande, Marilande, and Sherlande. My blood, but not my memories. I grew up surrounded by noise—pots clanging in the kitchen, Creole and English battling in conversations, babies crying, radios blasting Kompa and R&B. But beneath the noise was something deeper. A silence. A fear. A brokenness that everyone felt but no one named. Those early years should have been magical. They should have been filled with songs, bedtime stories, and the smell of safety. But safety, in our home, was a visitor—not a resident. And still, somehow, there was love. There were moments of laughter, games of hide and seek with Jalade, stolen spoonfuls of sugar from the kitchen, and the way Mommy kissed our cheeks on birthdays—even if she was angry the next minute. I didn’t know then that life would take a turn so sharp it would slice through my childhood like glass. I didn’t know that my body would be stolen from me, that truth would be my prison, and that I would learn to carry silence as armor. But before all that, I was just a little girl. I was Jada. Twin sister. Curious daughter. Wide-eyed and unready.